“A valid answer comes when the question is lived.”
― Elizabeth Vongsaravanh
I just recently purchased a new home. It is bigger than the little cottage where I lived with my two very large dogs. It has a basement and attic which is a first for me. (I never wanted to own a home with a basement because that is where all the scary things happen in the movies.) The newly purchased home is less than two miles from where I am living. And I am excited and nervous about this big commitment on the eve of turning the big Six-0h!
While my friends and colleagues are downsizing their living arrangements, I am moving into my first real house with a yard, two-car garage and all the responsibilities that go with a 1930’s home. Why am I, yet again, the salmon swimming upstream? Since I graduated from college and moving for my first job, I have lived in rental apartments, two-family homes, high-rise condos and a little 900 square foot cottage but never a house with a basement, attic and a second floor. Both the dogs and I will need to learn to use the stairs to go to bed each night.
As I tell friends about this purchase, they are surprised about how quickly it happened but not that it happened. Since my year of care-giving for my mother in our little cottage and since her death in 2015, not a day goes by that I don’t get asked, ‘Are you going to move?’ or ‘Will you and your long-distance boyfriend of thirteen years being living together?’ These are big questions.
I have been holding and ruminating about big questions since my experience with my mother and her passing.
Who will I be when I no longer have parents?
What work will and should I be doing during the final years of my career life?
Where will I live?
How will I use the next twenty years?
I have discussed these and many more big questions with friends, colleagues and clients. I am curious as to how other people are approaching this time in their lives.
It has been about two years of ruminating while working my mother’s estate and my consulting practice. I have tried to be expansive and consider every opportunity. I make copious notes and vision and journal. I try on different scenarios like clothing and see how they feel. And I tell myself to be patient and that it will sort itself out as it always has in the past. I feel anxious to find the right path as I know that the years will fly by and I want to make them count. Does this sound familiar to you? Do you have these kinds of thoughts?
Two years later, I am becoming clearer on my path and have found many answers to the big questions. I was able to make the home buying decision quickly and painlessly because of all of my deliberation and research. I knew what I wanted and it was like a puzzle piece falling into place. The picture of me is emerging and I like what I see.
As my friend celebrated this big decision with me and promised to attend a future house warming party, I reflected that life is a never ending loop of big questions and transitions. And though we each seek to find permanence in the moment and are always working for the next place to rest (when I find a job, when I graduate, when I marry, when the children are grown….) we are actually always in motion as is the world around us. I call it the ‘learning edge.’
I have navigated the big questions with reflection, visioning, list making inventories, finding frameworks to help me make sense of all the divergent thoughts. I seek role models, I read, ruminate, and discuss it all with people whose opinions and experience I respect.
For a while I was waiting. Waiting to learn what my long-time, long-distance relationship was planning to do in his retirement. I thought we could plan together and that his decisions would inform mine. However, we are on different timelines. He is only just starting the big question process. At first this really frustrated me and endangered our relationship. But I quickly realized that I was attaching my future happiness to his decisions. Wow! Big questions and bigger lessons.
Here at almost 60 years of age, I discovered an essential life lesson. My happiness is mine. Mine to create and nurture and grow. If I depend on someone or something else to find my happiness I will find myself disappointed. I am responsible for my health, my happiness and my life. This really informed me on me. What a gift it is to be given this lesson and still have much of life’s road to blaze. What a gift to find clarity on some big questions. What a gift to have relationships with which to share the exploration.
I am confident that there will be more big questions, more learning edge and more lessons in this life. Rock on!
Are you on the edge of a transition (empty nesting, retirement, new job, promotion)?
What big questions are you asking yourself?
What most excites you about your future?
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“Life is full of unanswerable questions including how to live and what to live for.
It takes extreme courage to live honestly by a person’s beliefs
and never rest until a person achieves the type of life that he or she envisions.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
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